Google is throwing its hat in the e-book ring, and per usual Google policy, they’re injecting their own “don’t be evil” spin on things. Whereas the book offerings of Amazon are well known for their Orwellian DRM restrictions that are available only on the Kindle, Google will offer its books free of any restrictions in an open format for all devices, from readers to mobile phones to computers.
Coming in early 2010, Google will open its e-book store with 50,000 titles. The books would be indexed and searchable via the Google Books site. This also means that purchasers will have access to the purchased books via a web interface as well as on their reading devices. Users’ browsers will also allow the books to be cached for offline reading using Google Gears.
While nothing official relating to Google’s new OS announced, a web-app for reading e-books fits in perfectly with Google’s plans to moving everything into a Chrome browser-OS-web application system. Also, there are many companies currently offering e-books that have been a round for a while, so Google is hardly new to the game. At the same time, e-books have yet to truly catch on yet.
We, of course, would like to think that this is only because Google wasn’t playing the game.
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